Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Sorry for the big lag in posting, but I have moved. That's right, I'm no longer in San Francisco. I've moved to sunny (well, not for the last week) San Diego for work. Once I get properly settled in, I'll start posting a little more regularly.

Monday, September 3, 2012

If you haven't seen it, or don't follow comics, there's a comic book out there called The Goon by Eric Powell. Dark Horse Comics puts it out, and Powell is even trying to get the funding together to put out a CGI animated movie with Paul Giamatti as one of the voices. Well, Dark Horse has a little contest to draw The Goon and win a bunch of swag, so I thought I'd take a shot at it. Here's my entry.

A little bit retro, but I liked how the skull came out. Not as happy with how Goon himself came out, but I can live with it. Done with watercolors and markers (of which I'm diggin the new Copic markers I used on this piece). The piece itself looks better in person than it does in the scan for some reason. Maybe I need to work on my Photoshop skills for levels on scans a bit more. Anyway, here it is, enjoy.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

A couple of nights ago I decided to try screwing around with pastels again, especially since it's been a few years since I last touched them. So I cleared off the workspace, plopped down the pad of 19" X 24" I had lying here, and went to work.

Recently, I've been watching the animated Ultimate Spider-Man online (because for some reason Disney XD is a 'premium' channel, and I don't get it). One of the last episodes I watched had Thor being turned into a frog by his brother Loki. For those of you that don't know, there's a long story behind Throg and the other Pet Avengers. Suffice to say, that was my inspiration in today's piece. Behold! Throg! Frog of thunder!

I had forgotten how hard (and messy!) it was working with pastels. I actually had to go out and buy some blending sticks since I didn't have any laying around (again, it has been a few years since I've touched pastels). Once I got into it, I had a bit of fun. Working with pastels harkens back to finger painting as a child, except that if you want anything recognizable to come out of the effort, you really do need to plan the composition ahead of time.

So there you have it. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

If you guessed "Step Up Revolution", well then you obviously haven't been reading this blog. Here's a little artwork I did last night to give you a hint:

"The Dark Knight Rises" is the correct answer. I had the opportunity to see a sneak preview last night, but the showing was at 10pm. For a nearly 3 hour movie. I passed on it so that I could see it at a decent time, without having to wait a couple of hours in line to boot.

I'll probably wind up working on this pic a little more to get some color in it. Still not sure if I'm going to go digital or the more traditional route that I've been doing lately. Anyway, hope you enjoy the pic.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

If you live in a large city like I do, then you probably have various illegal fireworks going off all around the city at various times of the day and night during the weeks surrounding the 4th of July. So that was my inspiration for this quickie piece I did. I finished it in gray markers instead of my usual watercolors, because I had recently been reminded of Tim Sale's work. Now if you don't know who Tim Sale is, go check out his artwork. Go on, I'll wait for you....

Back? Good stuff, huh? You probably noticed that most of it is in black and white, and grays. There's a reason for this..Tim is color blind. His work gives off a very noirish feel. I wanted to see what I could do with just grays, black and white. So here's Captain America.

This version I tweaked in PhotoShop to get rid of the blue pencil marks. Unfortunately, as a result, it also lost some contrast. One of these days I'll learn the right way of removing blue pencil, but for now, it looks like I'll have to keep trying by trial and error. Here's the same picture taken with the camera from my phone:

So, while this one is darker, a lot of the original contrast is kept intact giving it a better feel.

Finally, you may have noticed my logo in the bottom right of the picture. Maybe it's vanity, maybe I saw a cheap deal, but I had rubber stamps made of my logo so that I could stamp my work when I was done. Too arrogant? Does it take away from the artwork, or is it no different than a signature? Let me know what you think below.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Take a guess at what I saw last night at a sneak preview? Yup. This was an IMAX showing. I'm going to try and keep things as spoiler free as possible, but I am also going to talk about the Spider-Man origin story as if everyone reading this already knows it (especially since Raimi went over this in 2002, but it gets rehashed again in this movie).

To start with, the origin story is changed a little with the addition of Peter's parents, and how Peter's father worked for Oscorp. Peter's parents went on the run, leaving him with Aunt May and Uncle Ben. Ben is played very well by Martin Sheen, but Sally Fields looked at times lost as to what role she was playing as Aunt May. To say she was miscast is an understatement.

This version of Peter Parker finds him to be an 'edgy', brooding skateboarder who you get the feeling doesn't exactly do well in school. When he finds a bag belonging to his father in the basement, his brooding becomes a tantrum about his parents. This Peter gets into Oscorp by pretending to be someone else (screwing that person in the process, which we're supposed to find funny), and then breaking into a 'high security' lab. Now I say 'high security' because even though every employee is issued a magnetically striped key card, the labs with the sensitive experiments are guarded by a touchscreen with a pattern recognition lock. Much like you'd find on a smart phone or tablet. So greasy fingers would show you the simple pattern needed to unlock the door.

Now comes the part that really didn't irk me until I thought about it later, how Spidey gets his powers. We all know that Peter gets bitten by a spider and gains his powers, and that the spider died after biting him. Well, what if there were a whole room filled with dozens of these very same spiders? Spidey wouldn't be so special now, would he since pretty much anyone could gain those powers by wandering into the poorly secured room and getting bitten.

Moving on...now that Peter finally has his powers, again, he gives Dr. Conners (who worked with his father at Oscorp) a formula that his father wrote and had hidden in the bag in the basement. So supposedly this smart kid, who reads everything Dr. Conners has written over the last 15 years, and in those writings mentions numerous times the equation needed (by name) to complete his life work, which was hidden in the basement, hands over the equation to Conners. No questions asked. Seriously, I thought I was watching Episode three of Star Wars all over again where Anakin turns to the Darkside for no good reason whatsoever.

Not to mention that this kid with a supposedly moral upbringing, uses his new powers to get revenge on the school bully. This gets him community service and a stern talking to (which he immediately brushes off and ignores) by his Uncle. He then just seems to brush off all his responsibilities to hang with a guy his father kept secrets from and whom he doesn't know. Again, common sense in the script is ignored.

Uncle Ben finally kicks the bucket (changed a little from both the book and the first movie), so what does Peter do? You guessed it, he leaves his newly widowed Aunt to fend for herself while he goes out night after night looking for Ben's killer. There's no comfort or sympathy from Peter to his Aunt (at least not on screen) like we saw in the 2002 version of this movie. This Peter just becomes an angry dick with powers.

The Lizard comes about thanks to Peter handing over his father's formula, and Conners being rushed to produce results. Long story short, Peter has to find a way to stop and reverse the problem he created in the first place.

I'm tired of heroes and villains being intertwined so intimately in their co-creations in movies. In comics, the hero stops the bad guy because it's the right thing to do, not because the villain is his mom's former boyfriend's cousin's room mate who accidentally drank the same radioactive Kool Aid mixed with cat feces making him all crazy for scratching posts in the nearby tri-county region.

Anyway, there's a sewer scene that further shows the screenwriters don't know how to do subtlety with their plot devices, so once again they make this version of Peter do something incredibly stupid involving his camera. More CGI hi-jinks ensue.

Speaking of CGI, there's a lot of it in this movie. It looks like CGI, and you'll go with it, or you won't. The animation is good, but I could have done without the constant freeze frames of Spidey in mid-leap just to recreate a classic pose or comic cover. The Lizard still looks like a Goomba from the 1990's Super Mario Bros. movie, no matter how hard they try to make him into a bad-ass. See for yourself.

The characters never really seem fleshed out beyond the contrived plot devices. The rehash of the origin didn't need to be retold, especially not since it was only ten years ago it was told in the first place. Forty five minutes could have been cut from this movie to make it tighter and less...dull. The 3D is interesting in parts, but completely unnecessary. The script could have used some polishing from an actual professional writer instead of a scriptwriter, just to remove a lot of the boredom in the dialogue of the non-action scenes.

Rating: Bargain matinee. Only if you really want to see it. Avengers set the bar extremely high, and this movie didn't even come close to it.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

I've let my blog linger for quite some time, and a lot of it was due to apathy towards art for a while since I still haven't found a job (oh, Christ! he's gonna talk about this shit again!). The other part was due to me working on again, off again on a little project I set before myself because it came to me in a dream. Well, not entirely...let me explain.

You know how sometimes your body jerks you awake just as you're about to fall asleep? Well, my brain tossed an idea and an image at me instead, and it made me giggle awake. Yes, you read that right...giggle. My brain tossed me a character mash-up that I couldn't just do one and be done...no, no, this had to be a whole series that had to be released in its entirety. Why, you ask? I'll tell you even if you didn't ask...I had to release it as a completed series, because once the idea was out there, the characters keep flowing.

Others will run with it, and I'm perfectly fine with that, but I just wanted to get my list of favorites out of the way first. So without further gilding of the lily, and with much adieu, I present to you my mash-up...Mutant Wars.

Yes, a mash-up of Star Wars and Marvel Comics characters. Each character was drawn with pencil and ink, and then painted with watercolors and finished with markers. I scanned each one in and set them up on a digital background. All the shadows are part of the original pieces (ie. no digital painting done).

Friday, June 22, 2012

You're probably wondering what in the hell happened to me (or you might not even have noticed that I haven't posted in a while). Well, long story short, still job hunting, a little depressed that nothing is coming up, still drawing a line of concept art that I'm two characters away from finishing (since it really needs to be released as a set), came up with an idea for a comic strip AND a series of video shorts in the vein of the Uncle George video.

Other than that, nada. Watching movies, tv shows, and playing a few video games sporadically while waiting for job interviews that I get close to getting, but ultimately go to someone else. Anyway, enough of my depressing kvetching. You still there? Good. Here are a few quickie reviews:

"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter": Rating - Matinee ticket price. Not as good as the book, since the director (who also directed "Wanted") pretty much copied "Wanted" only with Lincoln and vampires. It's fun, but a little too long.

"Ted": Rating - Full price ticket. Yeah, I know, I'm just as surprised as you are about this rating. I'm not a big fan of Seth MacFarlane and Family Guy, but this movie was actually funny if you like stoner comedies. The best part of it is that has a recurring Flash Gordon theme running through it. Yes, the cheesy 80's movie that we all know and love. The only turn off is the Giovanni Ribessi subplot.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

I'm still not really getting into this movie. We didn't need another origin story just a mere ten years after Raimi's first movie. Sally Fields and Martin Sheen as Aunt May and Uncle Ben? Really? And then there's the whole 'in 3D' aspect that I could really do without.

I like Spider-Man and the Spider-Man mythos a lot, but I'm finding it hard to get excited about this version.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Just got back from seeing a sneak preview of Chronicle, and honestly all I can say is 'Wow!' Before I get into the review (which as always, is free of any spoilers), I just want to rant for a minute on the asinine policy some screeners have for cell phones. This particular screening security was wanding people as they went in, and if you had a cell phone or tablet, etc. they wanted you to check it in with them. The only thing was that the 'contract' they have you sign says that if your electronic device goes missing, it's not the theater's or the employee's responsibility. Having seen this game before, I knew at the end of the screening, they dump all the phones, etc. on the table and rely on the 'honor system' of people to not steal someone else's stuff. Long story short, I ran a little confusion play that got me past the guards with all my electronic stuff firmly in my bag. Seriously, the projectionist is more liable to record a bootleg version at a sneak peek than someone in the audience.

With that said, Chronicle is a story about three high school guys who get super powers. Yeah, yeah, you've seen this one before, right? Nope. First off, the whole movie (or at least a good majority of it) is filmed by one of the guys named Andrew. Andrew isn't a nerd, but he isn't popular mainly because he's withdrawn due to a fairly shitty home life. Matt is Andrew's cousin, and they go to the same school. Matt isn't popular, but he isn't invisible like Andrew. Matt is the average high schooler. Then there's Steve. Steve is popular, running for class president, but a genuinely nice guy, not a douchebag. Steve knows Matt, and that's how this trio ends up together at a barn party where they get their powers.

Their powers are actually telekinesis. Telekinesis (for the uninitiated) is the ability to move or manipulate objects with the power of the mind. A majority of the movie is spent with the guys learning how to control their powers and use them in different ways. It's through this growth that the guys start to realize that Andrew is not only strong, but he lacks a few morals as well. This does lead to a final scene that is laden with special F/X and a fight that is not only well done given the small budget, but makes you feel for the characters as well.

The refreshing thing about this movie (besides the lack of shaky cam), is that the writers deliberately avoided mentioning comic books, pop culture references, or any other superhero kind of reference that lesser writing nerds would have been leaning on as a crutch since page one. Why is it refreshing? Just because it's a movie about guys that gain superpowers, doesn't mean that we need to carpet-bombed with hackneyed references to Superman, Spider-Man, or Star Wars. Even those of us that read comics and play video games get tired of the, quite frankly, insulting pandering writers will shoehorn into a script just to try to make it feel like a 'comic book movie'. Stop the self awareness, we get it already.

There's one scene in this movie which has become my favorite. Andrew is dressing up into his dad's old firefighter outfit set to the strains of Ziggy Stardust while the camera floats and circles over his head. Trust me, when you see the scene, you'll wonder why no one ever thought of it before since it works so well in its simplicity and the song works oh so well in a superpowered movie.

So in conclusion, the movie is more character development BUT you do get action dispersed throughout with a huge explosion of action at the end. Very well done, and well balanced. When you can feel empathy for the bad guy, you know the writer has done a great job. I would say that if there was one drawback to the movie, it would be the CGI. It's not great, but given that the movie was made for a rumored $15 million, it can definitely be forgiven.

Rating: Full price ticket, multiple viewings. Get out there and see this one if you want to see something different.